As a staff member at the Diablo Valley School in Concord, Calif., Vicente Lopez's job responsibilities are frequently in flux. Currently, one of his titles is "bicycle mechanic." In the past, he's been charged with tutoring students in Spanish slang, serving as an office clerk, and too many other things to recall.
Diablo Valley, a private K–8 school, is a democratic or "free" school, which means it is run by students as much as by adults. Students decide what they want to learn, are free to either show up to class or not, and even handle disciplinary actions by serving rotating terms on a judicial committee, much like jury duty for adults. "We decide everything together in a school meeting once a week," Lopez explains. "And when I say everything, I mean everything. We decide curriculum, budget, hiring, and firing."
Government lessons at the school, which doesn't test its students, are a no-brainer. "We don't have projects on democracy," says Lopez. "Democracy is our structure." Rather than traditional classroom lectures, students at Diablo Valley mostly learn through play. Lopez stands by this method and maintains that students still get a great education.
"Nobody's ever not learned how to read," Lopez says. The student who put off learning to read the longest was 12 when she finally broke down and asked somebody to teach her. Her reasoning? All her friends were reading The Hunger Games and she wanted in on the fun.
More Motivation
Free schools like Diablo Valley are intriguing, if extreme examples of what can happen when students are given opportunities to make decisions affecting their academic experience. Should this radical model of student voice be scaled to public schools? Most experts say no. Traditional academic institutions, however, are increasingly working to incorporate student perspectives into schoolwide curriculum planning and decision making.
Schools can encourage student voice on a number of different levels. As Pennsylvania State University professors Dana Mitra and Stephanie Serriere note in a 2012 report, "At its simplest level, student voice can consist of young people sharing their opinions of school problems with administrators and faculty. More extensive student voice initiatives include collaboration between young people and adults to address problems in the school, with rare cases even allowing students to assume leadership roles in change efforts."
Russell Quaglia, who has researched the topic for more than 30 years, has found that when students believe they have a voice in their education, they are seven times more likely to be motivated to learn. Student voice initiatives also "increase the ability of young people to identify problems and develop action plans to address them, facilitate conversations with adults and youth, and speak publicly to diverse audiences," write Mitra and Serriere.
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The feedback can be eye-opening for school staff. Erik Martin, a junior at the University of Maryland-College Park, says that when administrators ask for students' opinions, they often learn more about the school's climate than they thought possible.
"You can talk to teachers and [other] administrators, but students are the brutally honest ones. They're the ones who will tell you what they're really seeing or feeling," says Martin.
Beyond the Survey
Given its value, how do schools gather and facilitate student feedback? Many educators mistakenly believe that having students fill out surveys is a sufficient way to solicit their opinions, says Quaglia. "A survey's not a bad thing," he says, "but we have to take the survey and figure out why students are saying what they're saying." Quaglia, who works in schools across the nation, has found that real change manifests when schools go a step beyond survey taking and form student focus groups to discuss the issues raised in surveys.
When a surprising result is revealed—for example, "students don't believe the school cares about them"—principals should convene student focus groups to gain insight and brainstorm solutions. Focus groups should be limited to six students from different grade levels and backgrounds so that everyone has a chance to speak, notes Quaglia. Productive conversations require a mind-set in which administrators equally value student perspectives, he adds. "The lines of leadership in these situations get blurred."
Diane Burbank, principal of Woodside High School in California, regularly uses student focus groups to tackle perceived problems. Last year, the school received a complaint from a student's mother about the amount of homework assigned. To determine whether the majority of students were overwhelmed with too much homework, the school convened 15 focus groups over the course of three months.
Each group consisted of 10 to 15 randomly selected students. Two days before they assembled, students received the discussion questions so that they had time to prepare. Staff members led the first eight groups, posed questions to the students, and facilitated the discussion. Students who received training and had the chance to observe the staff-led groups then led the final seven groups. This training is a crucial component, says Burbank. "You can't just say, 'Go lead a focus group.' You need to first build the students' competence and confidence."
Staff compiled the results from the focus groups, and because of the findings, Woodside developed a homework matrix that lists the expected amount of homework for each class. Now, students use that information when they choose their classes each term.
Quaglia says for these kinds of initiatives to work, school leaders need to trust what students are saying and be willing to put their ideas into practice—even if doing so feels uncomfortable at first.
"All students have something to teach us, but I don't think educators believe that yet," Quaglia asserts.
Further Reach
In addition to individual schools, districts and communities can provide opportunities to strengthen student voice. David Reilly, an assistant superintendent at the Sequoia Union High School District in California, suggests giving students a chance to speak in front of local school boards to convey their challenges and aspirations. School boards can then incorporate the feedback into curriculum planning. For student voices to come across clearly in school board meetings, Burbank says it's vital that school staff—possibly teachers in leadership classes—coach kids beforehand on how to prepare presentations and reports.
Intermediary organizations that exist outside the school community have also been effective in amplifying student voice, says Mitra. In Kentucky, a group of high school students supported by an education advocacy organization made national news earlier this year when they launched a campaign to involve students in the school superintendent election. The bill they proposed made it to the Kentucky Senate, but failed in the House of Representatives just before the 2015 legislative session ended. However, media attention surrounding their efforts landed publicity from the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Rachel Maddow Show. Rachel Belin, director of the student voice team at the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, said that in addition to the national coverage, local stories written about the students' work reached more than 9 million readers in Kentucky.
Since then, the 70 students have only gained momentum. Says team member Eliza Jane Schaeffer, a junior at Henry Clay High School in Lexington, "Right now, we are working on the 'Postsecondary Project,' which examines what goes wrong during the transition from high school to college; an initiative that explores the pros and cons of the Common Core; and a student voice audit of Clark County Junior High [a pilot that could soon be replicated in other schools]. Each of our projects prioritizes students as the chief stakeholders."
Similarly, a team of middle school, high school, and college students based in Baltimore drafted a national "Student Bill of Rights" to fight a phenomenon they describe as "education without representation." Student voice activist Martin served as the bill's chief editor.
Broken into 11 sections, including "free expression," "safety and well-being," and "fair assessment," the bill outlines rights the group believes all students should have. An example: "All students are entitled to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to form and hold opinions without limitation and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media." Martin says this point relates directly to student newspapers, which often find themselves at odds with administrators.
Martin adds that the team, whose members have hosted events and spoken at national conferences, also advocates for getting students onto local boards of education—even if they are below the voting age—and better due process for students charged with breaking school rules.
Their work has contributed to a conversation that's only growing louder. "The biggest shift we've seen so far has been cultural—with every convening we've held, a few more educators and administrators see the immense value of incorporating student voice into their decisions," says Martin. "We've got to change hearts and minds before we can change whole institutions."
Mutual Respect, Mutual Benefits
Whether through focus groups, informal discussions, or other methods, the main step schools can take to encourage student voice is to create an atmosphere of mutual respect between students and administrators. Student voice advocates say that if a school has a positive and supportive atmosphere, it will see the benefits.
Students will benefit, too. As research has shown, students who believe their voices are heard feel a greater attachment to their school. Maybe it's because, like Lopez of the Diablo Valley School said, student voice is an education in democracy itself. Involving students in their educational journey creates well-rounded, high-achievers who are capable of problem solving in the real world.
